


alphabet aus

by lovelyorbent



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors, Alternate Universe - Bands, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Edwardian, Alternate Universe - Firefighters, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:41:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28532337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelyorbent/pseuds/lovelyorbent
Summary: a - actors (spuffy) (T)b - bands (spuffy/fuffy) (T)c - coffee shop (the Gang + xanya) (M)d - domestic (spuffy) (E)e - edwardian (fuffy) (G)f - firefighters (the Gang) (T)
Relationships: Faith Lehane/Buffy Summers, Spike & Buffy Summers, Spike/Buffy Summers, Xander Harris/Anya Jenkins
Comments: 19
Kudos: 40





	1. in which they are actors in a terrible slasher b-movie called "slayer"

**Author's Note:**

> aka the thing where i type in 'alternate universe - [letter of the alphabet]' and then pick my favorite off of ao3's list of suggestions. there simply are not enough aus in this fandom. if anyone wants to MAKE MY DAY and write more of any of these snippets PLEASE DO you have my full and enthusiastic permission and please send me a linque
> 
> please know that in this au, andrew is a tabloid journalist and xander is a cartoon voice actor. willow is a writer and anya is the most feared agent in town. cordelia, of course, is super famous, as she deserves to be. angel is in the tabloids all the time because everyone's like "which starlet will he break the heart of next" and he and spike both hate that, but for different reasons. andrew has speculated about whether they have had a torrid gay love affair, to which spike says (rude hand gesture) and angel says (blank expression)

"Cut!" Giles hollered, and Buffy sagged out of her tensed, scrambling-up-the-stairs look and straight into annoyance. She picked herself back up and walked down the stairs past Spike, who was restlessly throwing his prop knife back and forth between his hands. 

"For Chrissake, do we really have to shoot this _again_? You're not Stanley bloody Kubrick and this isn't Eyes Wide Shut. It's a B-list horror film."

Buffy stood up from picking up her broken shoe and crossed her arms over her chest. She looked back up the stairs at him, eyes narrowed, and poked a finger at him. "He's the _director_ , which means _you_ need to make with the obeying."

"Buffy, I am quite capable of defending myself in the face of one of these infamous tantrums, although I appreciate the thought," Giles told her, before turning on his heel to face Spike. "And as for _you_ , we wouldn't have to reshoot if you didn't keep getting up the stairs too fast. I mean, for god's sake, have some patience. Buffy can't move faster, so you've got to slow down. I can't even count how many times we've been over this."

"This is why slashers always get offed," Spike complained. "They always waste time bloody slow-walking the kill when they've got the girl on the ropes and then her boyfriend arrives to save the day."

"If you have read the script — and _please_ , do not correct my misimpression if you, in fact, have not — you will know that 'Michelle' is going to kill you herself."

Spike glowered. " — well, I don't think Buffy's screams were very realistic."

Buffy whipped her head around and bit out each word of her reply, being sure that she held his eyes the whole time, her hands on her hips. "That's because _you're_... not... _scary_."

"Ah, well. Buffy, he has a point," Giles mumbled. "You _don't_ sound very scared."

"Because I'm _not_! Because he — "

Spike snorted at her. "I'm sorry, love, _what's_ the title of your job again? Is it truthsayer? Girl reacting rotely to her environment? Remind me — "

Buffy walked up the stairs to smack him in the chest, only refraining from clocking him because she so did not need another article about how she was difficult to work with, even if it was because of Mr. Difficult-to-work-with himself. "It's about to be 'girl who goes off script and kills you early'."

She had it on reliable authority that she could look intimidating when she wanted to, but Spike was suddenly grinning jauntily at her as if she had just done something very funny. Giles walked up the stairs behind her to hold up a hand in warning before he could make any sort of annoying, snarky reply. "While working with the two of you has often made me long for the days of snuff films, I think it's in everyone's best interest if the stars of this movie don't murder each other."

"At least not when the cameras aren't rolling," Spike pointed out. "I'm taking a smoke break. Be back when I can stand being around Goldilocks again."

He hopped over the edge of the bannister down to the floor below, and loped out of the house. Buffy glared after him, and Giles put a hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you have a break as well? I find that working with Spike brings out the need for it in everyone."

That wasn't quite true. Oh, he went out of his way to annoy Buffy and the rest of the cast and to disrespect Giles, but Buffy had seen him playing poker with the camera crew once after a late-night shoot, and he was always flirting with the PAs, who seemed to think it was their god-given duty to fawn all over him. She was fairly certain that she had seen one of the janitors staying late to run lines with him. He was apparently perfectly capable of being amiable, he just didn't care to exercise that skill with her. She wasn't quite sure why it bugged her so much. "Yeah," she replied, and shook her head, annoyed. "Be back when the homicidal urges have ebbed."

Spike was sprawled against the side of the building in the shadows when she strode outside. He was sucking on a cigarette and occasionally yawning up into the night air. He'd unbuttoned the blue button-down they had him wearing and looked more like an artsy single dad than a murderous frat boy with it open over his black t-shirt. Buffy thought about saying something cutting, but decided that it was better if she just kept walking.

"Come out to do me in early?" he asked her, holding the cigarette between two fingers and smirking at her. His voice cracked up two octaves and he fluttered his eyelashes at her, holding up his hands like she was pointing a gun at him. "If you let me go, I won't tell anyone, I swear! You don't have to do this!"

Buffy glared at him and walked over to the catering table to get a bottle of water. "Let's switch roles," she said sweetly, and thought about throwing it at his head. "You be the damsel in distress and I'll be the one with the knife."

"Fun thing about this movie is we're both the one with the knife."

"Trust me, there is _nothing_ fun about this movie when you're around."

Spike shrugged. "At least I can pretend to have emotions that aren't 'brassed off'."

She rounded on him. "At least I can _walk up stairs_!"

"Nah, but your arse looks pretty good when you're crawling up them, so we forgive you."

Buffy hurled the water bottle at him. "Don't be a pig." 

He caught it and took a swig before he threw it back underhand so it was easy to pluck out of the air. "Liked it well enough last week when I was railing you in your trailer."

She could feel her cheeks going violently red, and wasn't sure if it was from anger or embarrassment. "Shut up!" The water bottle went flying at his head again, and this time he ducked it, letting it hit the wall behind him. It hit him on the shoulder when it bounced off and to the ground, but he didn't have the courtesy to look as if it had hurt him. "We are _not_ talking about this."

"No, _you_ aren't talking about it." He took another drag. " _I'm_ doing whatever I want."

"If you tell _anyone_ — "

"Relax, pet."

"I'm _not_ your pet!"

"No, but you are awfully close to me for a bird who's supposedly telling me to bugger off." He blew smoke in her face, and Buffy suddenly realized that she was standing directly in front of him, with her index finger prodding him in the chest. She hadn't noticed herself advancing, but now that she thought back, she could remember his eyes flicking over her as she came forward. "Is this a request for repeat performance, or do you get this personal with all the blokes?"

Buffy stepped back and wished she still had something to throw at him. He swayed forward to follow her, and she hit him in the chest when he got too close. "Stay away from me."

"Right, you're on your Spike break. Only you're, oh, _here_ — " he pointed at the ground in front of him, " — instead of taking a huffy little walk around the neighborhood or making eyes at your precious director — "

She was letting him get closer. Why was she letting him get closer? When he started to lean in, her brain kicked on and she threw up her hands against his chest to keep him away. "You're going to mess up my makeup and Dawn is gonna freak."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she grimaced. Makeup was a weak excuse. It sounded more like a problem for him to solve than an unbreakable impediment to forward momentum.

He ground out the butt of his cigarette against the ground with his toe and then his fingers slid around her wrists. One eyebrow — the scarred one — lifted, his mouth quirking upwards with it. He didn't step back. "I could always reapply your lipstick after."

"I don't trust your lipstick application skills," Buffy hissed. "And I don't want to kiss you. Now let me go."

Spike dragged her hands off his chest and kissed her fingertips before he dropped them. "You don't _just_ want to kiss me," he agreed, and leaned towards her again. "Now why don't you toddle along before you're too much of a temptation for me to resist."

Buffy was irritated to find herself speechless, unsure whether to be turned on by being called a temptation, insulted to be told to "toddle" anywhere, or furious because he was pretending that he knew what she wanted better than she did. She opened her mouth and then closed it and gritted her teeth when he grinned at her.

"You look so sweet making that little goldfish face," he told her, and stuck another cigarette in his mouth. His sharp white teeth clasped it and focused her eyes for one second on his lips.

With a sound of inhuman rage, Buffy stormed back into the house, and Giles looked at her with his glasses perched on the end of his nose. "Ah, Buffy." He frowned, examining her face. "I — I think actually that you look even more stressed now. Which, while it could work in our favor, I suppose, thematically speaking, was not precisely the point of the break."

Buffy sat on the foot of the stairs and started putting together the broken heel again so she could slip it back on. "Can we film the scene where I kill him next? Also, can we add more blood and violence?"

Giles blinked at her and pushed his glasses up. "Ahem. Props?"

Dawn poked her head over the top of the staircase, looking excited. "I'll get extra blood. Ooh. And a bigger knife!"

Buffy sighed. "I love my job."


	2. in which they are all in punk bands and only spike and faith still dress the same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we just had to do a band au, given buffy's terrible lie to her mom in s2. i actually drew for this one but i hated all the drawings so i eventually gave up and just wrote this
> 
> the scoobies are a punk rock band. buffy, obviously, is the drummer, giles sings, xander plays bass, willow is on keyboard. anya is their manager. tara (uke and vocals) and oz (guitar and vocals) form a two-person punk folk group called honeymoon. dawn is traitorously into scourge, which was a three-person punk group composed of spike, angel, and dru (managed by darla) before angel got happily yokoed by cordy and dru left to pursue the kind of weird alt where they play harpsichords and synthesizers. spike was briefly just in the band by himself a la brendon urie being the only remaining member of panic at the disco but then faith (also a drummer) joined up with him and dragged them towards a more metal sound. spike and faith are both cripplingly in love with buffy and they both act like idiots every time they see her
> 
> obviously i can't fit all of this au-building into a snippet so i'm going to give you a rundown of my thoughts at the beginning of each chapter

"Have you seen it?"

Buffy looked up from doing her eyeliner and saw Willow waving the object in her hand so fast it was a pink, rectangular blur. "Your phone?"

Willow wrinkled her nose and tossed the iPhone onto the counter in front of Buffy, then put her hands on her hips, looking indignant. "The tweet!"

_@bloodyscourge:_

_considering sleeping with a lucky groupie tonight ;)_

"Spike is a pig," Buffy commented without blinking, and went back to the mirror, drawing the wing out further and then beginning to thicken it. "The Pope is Catholic. Wolves hunt in packs. What else is new?"

"I've heard recently that the sky is blue," Xander chimed in from further down the bus, where he was fiddling with the knobs on his guitar. "And also that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."

"The sky isn't actually blue," Willow told him. "That's just the color that — "

He held up a hand. "Will, please. I'm trying to get pumped before the show, not put to sleep."

Buffy looked him over, his worn grey t-shirt to his black leather pants to the cowboy hat that was sitting jauntily on his brow. "Are you really going to wear that hat?"

"If you knew what Anya said she was going to do with it later you wouldn't ask me that question."

"You look like the John Denver remix of a Siouxsie Sioux song."

Willow giggled, and then sobered. "But wait, Buffy, you're not mad?"

"I slept with him _once_. I'm not going to get all jealous girl because he reverted to type. He's not my boyfriend, he's just some lame — " She paused, stuck out her lip, and sighed. " — I don't know, fill in a good insult. I'm too pre-show nervous to be mean."

"Man-ho," Xander said.

"Cro magnon," tried Willow.

"Pillock," Giles added, climbing up the stairs with a set list in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. "Who is it that we're mocking?"

Willow turned to face him as Buffy started applying black lipstick. "Spike."

"Oh. Capital." He sat down and crossed his suit-clad legs at the knee. "Willow, Honeymoon is opening."

She perked up, and straightened the hem of the tarot card crop top that was slipped over her black-and-white striped turtleneck. "Ooh, I've got to get backstage. Buffy, text me if you want me to give him a nasty look." She disappeared in a swirl of denim, and then, after a moment, her bright hair poked up over the staircase again. "Or be mean to him on Twitter!"

Buffy finished putting on her makeup and pulled her long pink hair up into a high ponytail. "I can be mean on Twitter myself."

"Faith has it covered," Xander said, and held up his phone as Willow disappeared again.

_@shitfaithed replied:_

_like you could pull any groupies when i'm standing right next to you_

Buffy snorted. Spike _had_ been hugely more bearable since Faith had come around to keep him in line. She bent down to tie up her combat boots and then stood up, straightening the chains that were hanging from around her waist. "What do you think?"

"Very, ah, pastel punk," Giles told her, looking up from his notebook.

Buffy looked in the mirror at her pink blouse, torn black jeans, and the fishnet covering her arms and shoulders, and smiled. "That's what I'm going for."

"Ah, yes," said Xander. "Classic: Me cowboy, you valley girl, Will-o-the-witch, and Mr. Anarchy in the UK. This band really needs a consistent aesthetic." He waved his phone again. "Look, Oz and Tara even have matching hair."

Willow had posted a picture on Instagram of herself with an arm around each of them backstage, both blonde, both wearing loose white shirts. In the middle, she stuck out like a sore thumb with her bright hair and the Empress card imprinted in the center of her chest. Buffy opened it on her own phone and liked it. "I'm going to go check on Dawn."

She sprinted the distance between the bus and the stage door, trying to keep away from the few crazy fans who were hanging around waiting for a glimpse of one of them. She almost walked past Dawn without seeing her in the wings; she was dressed in so much black that she blended into the shadows. "Buffy, you're not even on until the end," her sister said, wrinkling her nose. "Or wait, are you here to see — "

" _You_ ," Buffy said hurriedly. "God, why does everyone think I care about that stupid tweet?"

Dawn frowned. "What tweet? Willow's over there."

Buffy blinked, and then felt herself blush. "Oh. Willow."

"Is this about Spike's tweet?" Dawn's angular face lit up, her eyes glowing with the joy of gossip. "Are you jealous?" Buffy realized her shirt said SCOURGE, and resisted the urge to stick her tongue out only because Dawn grabbed her arm and grinned brightly. "Oh my god, you are!"

"I am _not_ jealous! Why does everyone think I'm jealous?"

"Well, you _did_ sleep with him."

"Once! And we were both drunk! It barely even counts! And how does everybody know that, anyway? If he _told_ anyone — "

"We all know because you two almost _tipped the freaking tour bus over_ ," Dawn hissed. "He was _screaming your name_. It doesn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what was happening."

Faith announced her arrival by smacking Buffy's ass. "She could have been sleeping with me. I have a husky sex voice."

"Do you do an English accent?"

"Only when I fuck Buffy," Faith purred, and took her by the jaw to kiss her leisurely on the nose. Buffy rolled her eyes. "How's tricks, girlfriend?"

"I'm thinking about letting Willow give Spike a mean look."

"I can do you one better," Faith told her, and got out her phone and squared it up on them. "Kiss me for the camera, baby."

Buffy did. The flash snapped, and Faith put her arms around Buffy's waist and kept kissing her. "Hey," she mumbled, before Dawn giggled and Faith introduced tongue to the equation, her leather jacket creaking when she bent Buffy backwards and finished off the kiss with a loud _mwah_. Buffy was red in the face as Faith withdrew her hands to tap at her phone screen.

"And... sent," she crowed, holding up her phone. She had sent the photo to a contact named _Baby Blue Eyes_. "He'll start crying in t-minus — "

 _you're fired_ , came the immediate reply.

 _My groupie now ❤️_ , typed Faith before Buffy could stop her.

"Hey, I am not anybody's groupie," Buffy growled, and punched her in the arm. "You're _my_ groupies."

Faith ignored her and kept typing. Dawn's phone dinged, and she started giggling uncontrollably. When Buffy grabbed for it, she saw the dark Twitter interface staring back at her.

_@shitfaithed:_

_stole spike's groupie already. kobe_

Dawn had liked it. Buffy unliked it before Dawn could snatch her phone back. She got out her own phone.

_@summerstime replied:_

_I am NOT anybody's groupie._

Faith looked at her. Dawn looked at her. Buffy glared back at them as Honeymoon finished their second song. "Uh, B," said Faith. "You know they didn't know I was talking about you, right?"

"Screenshotted," sing-songed Dawn as Buffy scrambled to delete the comment.


	3. in which buffy and tara are baristas and xanya get jiggy in the bathroom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i hate this one but every fandom needs a coffee shop au. buffy and tara are baristas (of varying quality), anya is their manager, giles probably owns the surrounding bookstore, which dawn works at. anya considers xander showing up at work to order coffee to be a sex thing and as a result no one who works there will use the coffee shop bathroom, they always sneak away to use giles'. 
> 
> spike comes to heckle and treat the place like a library but also writes in the coffee shop a lot, mostly so he can surreptitiously ogle buffy. willow is here being supportive of her girlfriend, but also to ogle her girlfriend. spike and xander are roommates and have joint custody of some cats

Dawn gave her sister a long, contemplative look as she sipped her coffee, and then raised her head and nodded sagely. "You're a terrible barista."

Buffy frowned. "What? What's wrong with it?"

Willow, sitting across the table from them, reached over, popped the top off of the cup, and looked at the liquid inside. "Well, for starters, I'm pretty sure it's just warm milk."

"But I put it in the hissing thingy!"

"That just makes it foamy," Tara told her quietly when she walked back behind the counter, lower lip stuck out. She was fidgeting with the hem of her black apron, not quite looking Buffy in the eye, which meant that Buffy had done something monumentally stupid and she was trying to be nice about it. "It doesn't add anything."

"Well, somebody should have told me that." Buffy pouted. She pointed out over the counter. "Anyway, Xander and Spike liked theirs fine."

When she looked over at them, neither Xander or Spike was meeting her eye, either.

Dawn sighed and shook her head. "Cowards."

"I'm a big fan of warm milk," Xander piped up, raising his cup as if in toast. "Big fan. Keeps the bones strong. Belly warm. Buffy from making the sad face at me." He blinked at her. "Yes, exactly, that one."

Spike, sitting at a different table across the room from them, shrugged and waggled a hip flask. "I put bourbon in mine. No complaints."

Willow's brows pulled together as everyone else in the room made a face at that idea. "It's two in the afternoon."

"It's five o'clock in New York City, Red." The table collectively decided not to comment on that, although the comment that he was still jet-lagged from three years ago was _right_ on the tip of Buffy's tongue. She rolled her eyes at him instead. He pointed around at them. "Don't look at me like that. _I'm_ not the one who keeps getting my rocks off in the loo, need I remind you all."

"Who is getting their rocks off in my bathroom?" Anya asked, poking her head out the door of the office. Her brown hair was tied back in a bouncy ponytail, and, as usual, her uniform shirt was crisp and straight. Her face brightened at the sight of the table nearest the register. "Oh. Xander. Tara, can you — "

"Yes," Tara said quickly, as Anya held out her hand to Xander with the air of a monarch helping a new knight to their feet.

Xander glanced at all of them, wincing when he met Dawn's eyes, and then, unable to resist the gravitational pull of his girlfriend, hopped out of his seat. "Duty calls, ladies." He went across the room to her, letting her lead him to the shop's single bathroom, which was marked UNISEX/HANDICAPPED. "Please forget you saw this."

Silence reigned in the sunny coffee shop for a moment. One of the college girls at the table in the corner was zoned out staring at Spike with a dreamy expression in her eyes, and the other levered herself up out of her chair to order another drink.

"Do they do that every day?" Willow asked her girlfriend in a hushed tone while Buffy was making the large half-sweet, non-fat, triple macchiato. She remembered how to make it non-fat, but she was going to have to guess about what half-sweet meant.

"In about five minutes it's going to get kind of noisy," Tara told her in answer, bright red around the ears.

Spike shook his head, ignoring the girl who was still looking at him. "What's the bleeding point of having an office if you can't fuck _there_? I keep telling the boy that. I mean, I'd bend a bird over a desk any day before shagging her up against the bathroom wall. It's easier on your back, for one. Better view, for two. "

Buffy struggled not to react to that just like the rest of them; the girl who was looking at him was bright red and abruptly looked down at her coffee. Making a tiny irritated noise, Willow threw her pen across the room at him, missing by two feet. "Spike, _Dawn_ is here."

She was probably the one who should have objected to that, Buffy thought. She was used to Giles being the one who remembered that Dawn was seventeen and not supposed to hear stuff like that. Then again, she was pretty sure even Giles was starting to give up on censoring Spike for polite company.

A snort as Spike twiddled the pen around his fingers. "Boy Wonder is putting it to the manager in the ladies' room during work hours and _I'm_ the one setting a bad example for the kiddies?"

Dawn glared. "I'm not a kid!"

There was a discordant moan, barely audible through the door. "Oh, god, harder, Ahn — "

"Well, we've all had our innocence shattered now," Spike sighed.

"Like you had any to begin with," Buffy said acidly. The college girls in the corner looked over at the bathroom door and then at each other. Tara hurriedly shoved two dishtowels into the gap under the door, which deadened the sound only a little. "Maybe we could turn up the music?"

"Maybe we could put on majorly unsexy music," Willow suggested. "The Wiggles' Big Red Car."

"Raffi," said Dawn.

Spike jerked his chin at her, as if to say _I can do you one better_. "MacArthur Park on repeat, off-key bagpipe accompaniment."

From the soft look of her smile, Tara was the only one who apparently got the joke. She ducked her head again, elbows resting on the counter. "Anything with bagpipe accompaniment."

"Got me there," Spike replied, just as another groan came from the bathroom. "I reckon he's a tenor, what with the way he's singing in there. Could do with a bit of harmony, though. Pet, if you'll take contralto I'll go baritone."

Tara burst into giggles. "Stop flirting with my girlfriend," Willow told Spike, eyes narrowed. "She's gay. And mine. Also, she's a soprano."

Spike grinned at Tara and took a sip of his coffee, peering over the rim at her. "Beautiful _and_ talented."

Tara didn't look remotely embarrassed, which was funny because Buffy had seen her get embarrassed on other people's behalf. Usually on Buffy's behalf, after something like the warm milk debacle. Buffy decided, accordingly, to object on her behalf. "Spike, stop being gross."

There was a ceramic thump from the bathroom and a muffled half-shriek. Spike turned to the girl who had been ogling him. "You want to have a tumble against that door, love? I like to earn my insults."

Buffy almost leapt over the counter to clock him one, but the girls fled before it became necessary. 


	4. au where spuffy are gross and married and have a ton of kids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is mostly just because i wanted to write more porn, and also because i was musing about how spike would be as a dad after watching angel be a dad in ats
> 
> ultimately my answer is that i think he's probably the kind who's always getting yelled at for doing things like teaching the kids to climb onto the roof or juggling the baby. he buys leashes for the kids, not to keep track of them but because they like to swing on the ends

Buffy woke up to an empty bed, which was _so_ not right, not in this house. What was more, when she slid her hand over to the other side of the bed, the sheets were cold, and when she sat up and listened, there was nothing but silence from the open bedroom door. She swung her feet out of bed, pulling her robe around her, and padded quietly out of the room, careful to walk along the outer edges of the hallway so that the wooden floor would creak less.

When she poked her head in on Joy's room, her daughter was predictably out cold, lying on her belly with the covers tangled around her like she had been thrashing in her sleep. It was only six — she could be expected to be out until seven or eight at least — and anyway, she started tossing and turning when she was about to wake up, and at the moment she was stone still. When Buffy opened the door to the other room, the mystery of the silent, empty house was solved: Spike was passed out on the couch, his head hanging backwards over the arm, one twin lying on his chest and the other tucked into his side between him and the couch. He was wearing nothing but track pants (rucked up around one shin) and mumbling in his sleep, and all in all the three of them looked so cute that Buffy ducked out to grab her phone and take a picture before she tried rousing him.

It was the sort of picture that Dawn would strangle her for _not_ sending her immediately, Buffy reasoned, as she did just that. The light ping of Dawn replying _tell him he's lame for me_ made Spike's nose twitch, and Buffy looked up at him immediately to watch the moment his eyes slid open and he looked around blearily, clearly confused until he ducked his chin and saw the baby draped over him. He glanced immediately at the door and she put her hands on her hips as if she were telling him off, which got her one of those smiles he reserved for when he was trying to weasel his way out of trouble.

 _I'm trapped_ , he mouthed at her, lifting his chin to indicate the babies. _Save me_.

Buffy rolled her eyes, but obligingly walked over to relieve him of Danica so that he had a fighting chance of standing up with Emery without waking her. When she laid her down in the crib, Danny stirred and cooed and Buffy gritted her teeth, anticipating the waking cry, or the sight of big blue eyes. Spike had an identical panicked expression on his face when she turned back to look at him, but the baby made a little gurgling noise and subsided, and they both let out relieved breaths at the same time, which almost made her giggle and break the silence they were trying to maintain.

Many people carried babies like bombs or fragile glass sculptures; Spike carried them like angry cats. To Buffy's eternal annoyance, they always seemed to love it. She could be as ginger as she pleased and they were still liable to wake if she put them down when they were asleep, but Spike could seemingly toss them into the crib without waking them. She was pretty sure it was the way he walked — you wouldn't have thought babies would like a swagger, but apparently it didn't jostle as much as Buffy's normal walking did.

She had once tested the theory by imitating his strut with Joy in her arms, when she had been a newborn. They would never find out whether that walk was what kept the baby asleep, because she hadn't gone more than three steps before the two of them were laughing so loudly they woke her and set her crying.

He put Em down without ceremony and she didn't stir. Buffy told herself, to protect her own ego, that this was because she was _always_ a deeper sleeper, and anyway, Spike hadn't had to pick her up out of her nice warm resting place, he'd just had to roll her a little to the right so he could support her head when he lifted her. _C'mon, Short Round_ , he mouthed at her, and the two of them slipped out of the room and carefully shut the door behind them.

" _Short Round_?" she whispered indignantly to him.

"You're right, I ought to have waited until you were pregnant to pull that one out," he replied as he tiptoed down the hall ahead of her, which was the wrong answer on so many levels. "But I can't help but feel we've just done the switcheroo from the start of _Raiders_."

"I changed my mind, we are so not having sex," Buffy told him, crossing her arms over her chest even though he couldn't see her glaring at him.

His head snapped around so fast that Buffy almost lost her glare in the mirth of seeing him get a neck cramp. "Wait, you wanted to have sex?"

"Not anymore." She closed the door of the bedroom behind them and marched past him with her nose turned up. "I'm going back to sleep. You can take care of breakfast."

"Pricktease," he groaned, and caught her around the waist, reeling her back in to kiss her. She kissed him back, just enough to let him think he'd won, and then pulled away and climbed back into bed, shedding the robe over the bench at the end of the bed.

He gaped like a fish. Buffy smiled at him, the smile that she knew — from seeing Dawn and Joy do it to him a thousand times — always made him cave. "Wake me at ten," she told him primly, and pulled the covers up to her chin, settling into the mattress.

"You little minx," he said wonderingly. "Can't just dangle a prize before a bloke that way."

"Can," Buffy told him, sticking her tongue out. "Am."

Spike crawled into bed after her and slithered towards her under the covers. His hands found her waist as she turned over like she was huddling under the blankets, and he kissed the back of her neck and inched himself up against her back. "C'mon, baby. We haven't shagged in ages. I'll make you feel so good."

Buffy made an exaggerated snoring noise. He bit her shoulder. "It's been three days," she told him, trying to hold the moral high ground instead of laughing.

" _Ages_ ," he repeated. "And three days ago hardly counts; I didn't even get to touch you properly. It's been at least four."

"Oh no, four whole days."

"Time was, you would've been panting for it after four whole days," he said wistfully, hands stroking her sides and belly, circling lower and lower under the nightshirt she was wearing. "When was the last time I got to fuck you until you couldn't feel your legs, hmm? How long's it been since we opened the top drawer of the dresser?"

"Well, I don't know how long since _you_ opened it, but _I_ had the vibrator out yesterday while you were giving the kids baths."

"All right, that does it," Spike told her, and rose up on one elbow. His hand fell onto her shoulder, and then he was pulling her over backwards so that she lay on her back with her side against his front. "Your cunt needs a reminder about where its bread is buttered, love."

He kissed her before she could tell him how stupid that sounded, and then he was slipping under the covers, pushing up her nightshirt to kiss her breasts, her stomach, her hips. There was a little bit of skin just under her navel that had never quite snapped back into place after having kids, and he always bit her there on his way down to her pussy, which she had found gross and weird the first few times but at some point had shifted into being endearing.

When he settled his mouth over her she sighed and twined her hands into his hair, which was dark at the roots and curled around her fingers like it had a mind of its own. "We need to redo your roots," she murmured to him, thumb brushing over his hairline as he stroked his tongue across her.

"When you talk about my hair while we do this it makes me feel like you aren't paying attention," Spike told her, raising his head and tossing the covers up over his head so she couldn't see his hair anymore. "If my tongue inside you is starting to bore you, Buffy, just divorce me."

Buffy leveraged her feet against the mattress to push her hips towards him, legs spread wide. "Less talky, more — " If she didn't know better she would say the way he sucked on her clit was vindictive: too much too soon. " — yes, more that. But also less that. That but softer."

The motion of his mouth shifted so he was barely kissing her, his tongue winding leisurely through her folds. The sort of sex they had a lot less time for these days — a quickie here, a handjob in the shower there — because, as it turned out, even sex drives like theirs had to bend to babies screaming in the other room. He didn't deepen the strokes of his tongue until she was wet and tingling for more, and then he strengthened them in slow, lingering pulls across her cunt.

Buffy tightened her thighs against his ears, mostly because he'd always told her that he liked it, feeling her drag him closer. His bare back was warm under her feet, and it flexed when he raised his arms to drag her closer by the hips, the familiar profile of his face pressed against her. He seemed to have taken her at her word when she said _softer_ , because he was driving her slow and easy. It was nice; sweet pressure like he was drinking her down, no teeth, all languor. 

Her treacherous mind wondered how long they could possibly have this moment before one of the girls was screaming for them.

Spike brought her towards the edge, and then held her there, pressure unchanging, until she wasn't sure if she wanted to pull his head against her or push him away for relief. Out of force of habit she had withdrawn one of her hands from his hair and was biting her knuckle to keep from making any noise louder than the low whimpers that he always pouted if she didn't give him. It kept her from pleading with him, which was good because he always strutted a little extra after she had broken down and begged, and it was hard not to make snarky remarks about it in front of the kids.

She arched up against him, and he made a deep, pleased noise into her, fingers stroking her as he started to give her a little more pressure, grinding into her harder with his nose. Finally, when he raised his chin and sucked on her, slipping two fingers inside her with a practiced twist, she yanked on his hair and came, squirming against the mattress as the pleasure rolled through her.

He emerged from under the covers as she took her fingers out of her mouth, face flushed with heat and mouth shining with her. His grin was loose and wicked like it always was when he looked at her like this, and he moved up her body to sink inside her with a single slow push, gasping into her mouth as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

They missed the first knock, too caught up in moving together. They missed the second, too. But the third was unmistakable. "Mommy!" came the little high voice from outside the door, and both of them froze and looked towards it. "Mommy, I need help!"

"If I kill her we can just make more, right?" Spike muttered, but accepted his fate when Buffy sighed and wriggled backwards off his cock, hitting the floor with wobbly steps and putting on the track pants that he'd left on the floor on his way to the bed. They were too long, and too big at the waist, but with the shirt over them, they covered enough.

"Pull up the sheets," she admonished him, and he dove under the covers before she pulled open the door.


	5. au where everyone has to wear eight layers to be "proper"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> my gay secret is that i love Forbidden Gay Historical Romances even though i know the reason they're forbidden is homophobia.
> 
> n-e-way faith is a member of wesley's family's staff, buffy and dawn are giles' wards after the death of her rather middle-class mother which is why they spend time at wesley's. willow (an academic compatriot of wes and giles and friend of buffy) is a militant suffragette and tara, a seamstress, is her frequent """companion""". anya is also a militant suffragette, and flirts outrageously. there are rumors that she is fast, and will never get married. they are true. xander is also a member of wesley's family's staff. the whirlwhind is off doing whatever they were doing in the edwardian era
> 
> this is bad but whatever

As Willow excitedly plunged into a discussion of Rutherford's radioactivity study — a topic which plainly fascinated Mr. Wyndham-Price and appeared to be of at least mild interest to Giles — Buffy half-heartedly wondered how it was she was continually dragged to these little soirees. Giles insisted that it would be educational, and Willow proclaimed every time that it was lovely to see her, but the real reason, of course, was quite different, and indeed quite unspeakable.

She watched Faith pour cups of tea at the side table, her waist tapered by the corset she was wearing under her black dress and emphasized by the white ribbon that secured the extra fold of cloth around her waist. Buffy envied that figure; she was hardly lacking in beauty herself, but her waist, even squashed to its narrowest point, was simply not much smaller than the circumference of her chest and hips, and try as she might she could never quite eke out the dramatic curves that seemed to come so easily to Faith.

When she brought the tea over to the table, she let her eyes fall on Buffy and drag over her green dress, lingering on the curve of her waist and the swells of her breasts, pushed into cleavage by the tightness of her bodice. When Buffy flushed she flashed a tiny smile and withdrew, retreating to the side of the room. The cups of tea were split between them all almost immediately. Buffy took a sip of hers — it was foul — and then put the cup tactfully back down. Around the table, everyone else was doing the same.

"Oh, it's... it's good," Willow said, tears threatening at the corners of her eyes.

Giles didn't quite grimace, but Buffy did hear him utter an "oh, good lord" under his breath. Mr. Wyndham-Price, on the other hand, made a face and said, "Faith, do you think you might try a different... _variety_ of tea?"

"Sure thing, boss," Faith replied, and turned on her heel to walk out of the room in the direction of the kitchen.

"'Sure thing'," Giles muttered. "Americans."

When Buffy excused herself — she thought she could trust Giles to protect Willow's virtue around Mr. Wyndham-Price, although he had never shown any indication that anyone's virtue was even remotely in need of protection in his presence — and walked by the kitchen, she saw that Xander was making the tea, yawning as he stared out the window into the garden. Carefully, she slipped by the doorway without making noise and went down the basement stairs to the servants' quarters.

Faith was there, stacking wine crates into a little room just past the door that Buffy knew was the laundry. She didn't look up as Buffy descended the stairs, but she made a smug _hmm_ noise when her foot hit the bottom of the stairs. "I knew you'd come to find me."

Buffy felt her cheeks go red at having been seen through. "I thought you would be in the kitchen."

Faith's grin was more befitting a street rascal than a decent lady as she tossed the last crate onto the stack with a rattle of glass. "Xander and I have an agreement. He makes good tea and I lift the heavy things. He'll call me up when it's time to bring it out."

She tried to keep her disappointment out of her voice. "So it won't be long, then."

"Long enough," Faith said, voice low. And this was why Buffy kept accompanying Giles to these dreadfully dull little seminars, that look on Faith's face. The first time she had seen it she had rather thought she was imagining things, because that was the way men looked at her when they had tried to court her, and a woman had never given her that look before. By now it was old hat, that slow halting sweep of the eyes. None of her other suitors had never smiled while he'd done it — that would have been impolite — but Faith always did, a tooth-baring one that would be inappropriate in almost any situation, particularly from one lady to another. There was nothing but intent in that smile.

It never failed to make Buffy's heart thump.

She took four steps forward and kissed Faith to make the thumping stop, but it only ratcheted it up. Which was predictable, really, because that was always how it went. Her hands on Faith's jaw, Faith's hands on her waist, and in the room above them Giles was probably talking about something that she would never understand even if she did care to read the papers they read. She didn't come here to keep Willow or Giles company and she barely knew Mr. Wyndham-Price, but she hoped that he and Giles stayed friends, because it would be so much more difficult to find reasons to come here if they weren't.

And she would miss this, this kissing, Faith making little sighing noises and sliding her arms further around her waist, drowning out everything else except — 

"Faith!" At the sound of Xander's voice from the top of the stairs, they sprang apart, and Buffy dove for the laundry room to hide.

"Coming!" Faith yelled back at him, and straightened her dress. "He's not coming down here," she added to Buffy. "He has a stair quota for the day."

"Well, it doesn't hurt to be careful."

"That _wasn't_ long enough," Faith said contemplatively, and disappeared up the staircase.


	6. au where they all avoid getting set on fire as a job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> spike, buffy, angel, and faith are specialized in search and rescue, xander holds the hose, willow and tara are both shift medics. giles is too old for this but runs the station. anya is dispatch. i don't know how fire stations work but if anyone owns a dalmatian, it's probably xander, the only undisputed dog person on the show
> 
> next year xander will be in the sexy firefighter calendar because anya will Make Him

"Shift change," Xander sang, a little too enthusiastically for Buffy's tastes considering it was 8 a.m. Willow, normally a morning person, apparently felt similarly, because she threw a shoe at his head when he swung into the bunks and then pulled the covers up over her head. "Whoa! Incoming. What's wrong with you guys?"

"There was a 4 a.m. call," Spike muttered at him, face buried in the pillow. "Shut the hell up."

"And what, when you came back some of the beds had mysteriously vanished?" Xander gestured at Buffy, who had fallen asleep against his side and was now using him as a mattress.

Spike apparently felt no need to apologize for himself, but Buffy lifted her head off his shoulderblade and explained, "He spilled coffee on my bunk, so he had to pay the price." Also, and this was beside the point, for someone who had such pointy bones, Spike made a surprisingly comfortable pillow.

Angel appeared over Xander's shoulder with his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw squared, Faith yawning behind him. "You know that's probably exactly what he wanted, right?"

"Relax, Peaches, we're both fully-clothed," Spike drawled, not sounding very convincing. "Buffy hasn't succumbed to my charms just yet."

"Yes, everyone here is in love with Buffy," Xander said, as if trying to keep the peace, which was a little rich considering that he'd previously been one of the people in love with Buffy. "And yes, she is sleeping on top of the Month of January. We all just have to live with that."

"Xander, stop being attracted to Spike and come to bed," Anya mumbled from the far corner. "It's very early and you're being very loud."

"Don't pretend you don't know I posed for November," Spike told him, finally raising his head. Buffy made a disgruntled noise when that moved his spine and he obediently laid back down. "I know you've had some naughty dreams about me and my giant axe."

Buffy giggled.

" _Shift change_ ," Angel reminded everyone.

"Shut up, August," said Xander. Spike just held up two fingers.

Faith shrugged and moved past him towards the little station kitchen. "I still say _I_ should've been August."

"You're more of an October, love," Spike told her.

"Also, we make the sexy calendar out of the guys for a reason," Willow finally said, emerging bleary-eyed from her nest. "If there are breasts in it only creeps buy it."

Spike shrugged. "Creeps have money." Buffy poked him in the side as punishment for moving again.

Xander gestured at Spike again. "Case in point."

"What makes you think I have any money?" Spike said.

"He doesn't have any money," Angel said.

"Xander!" Anya interjected, the tone of her voice now commanding. For someone who was half a foot shorter than him, she certainly could infuse her orders with an aura of authority that Xander was obviously swayed by, based on the look on his face, which was somewhat anguished, as if it killed him having to say no to her.

"Baby, I'm here for shift."

Faith reappeared, the bubbling sound of the coffee machine emanating from behind her, and pointed directly at Buffy. "Hey, if we're all going to spend the day in bed instead of working, I call Spike's." Buffy was reasonably certain she was making direct eye contact when Faith waggled her eyebrows.

Spike snickered. "Room for one more."

Willow peered over the room and her eyes landed on Angel. She pulled the covers back up. " _You_ can go get your own bunk. This one is girls only."

"Shift change!" Angel repeated, looking like he was getting a headache from saying it and not being listened to. If you asked Buffy, he had looked better with his shirt off and holding the fire hose for the calendar, which she owned a copy of purely for blackmail purposes. Unfortunately, Xander hadn't been wheedled into posing for June, and thankfully, Giles had strenuously turned down December.

"No one's stopping you," Buffy pointed out. "Punch in. Go clean a truck or something."

Angel gave her a glance that said very clearly, _I was hoping you'd be on my side about this, because you and I are the only two adults here_. And then a sigh that followed up with, _Well, maybe I'm the only adult here_.

"If that's all settled," Willow told them broadly when no one made a move to get up and no one made a move to lie down, "I'm going back to sleep."


End file.
